"If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job." That looks like sexism to me.
"That looks like sexism to me." You say that as if letting someone's gender affect your decisions is somehow, magically, inherently always ALWAYS wrong. It isn't. Some situations it is. Some situations it is not.
Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech
111–120 of 271 posts
Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech
#112It is a nice article. Interesting read for me as a male programmer. But this line kinda caught my eye under the "Gender-advantage" headline: "If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job." This is a problem.
Is this seriously the reality somewhere, that coders are 99% sexually frustrated super nerds? I always considered that to be a old stereotype :P
Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech
#113If you're a woman of average or better looks, you have one under-spoken superpower. Namely, how you interact with other men will have a huge effect on their social status. I'm not talking about overt flirtation (don't do it) or office relationships (avoid, avoid, avoid). I'm talking about more subtle stuff, like who a woman smiles at, who she initiates conversations with, and what her body language is toward various people. This will have huge ripple effects on the male status hierarchy. Much of the reason why men tend to seem "afraid of" women in the office is that they're afraid she'll judge him lowly and send out "loser signals" about him, bringing him down a notch or two. Since everything that happens at most workplaces (especially cliquish startups, so don't give me this "meritocratic" bullshit) is really about social status-- "performance" is a myth made up to justify firings and scare the mediocre-- this is huge.
Overtly flirting with the men in the office will destroy a woman's reputation, for sure. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the subtle fact that, among groups of people, women have the capability to exert a disproportionate influence on the status ordering. In fact, the best way to use this is to do exactly what a young man would do: be nice to everyone, reach out and try to make allies, seek mentors... but also take a small comfort in the fact that men have an added incentive to be nice to you-- you have a disproportionate effect on their image, and they want to be seen with you.
For example, a 23-year-old with 6 months on the job comes into the office of a powerful person (MD in banking, Partner in a law firm) and says that (s/)he is bored with the work that (s/)he is getting. If male, he's just another entitled fuck looking for an advantage. The response usually is: go away, pay your dues, and come back in 7 years after you've proven yourself (if I haven't fired you before that). That's because humans have a visceral hatred of low-status males, and in the workplace, men in the youngest 15% are almost always of low status (hence, they get the shittiest work).
If the 23-year-old is female, this 45-year-old executive might realize that having a 23-year-old woman come into his office once a week might give him a younger, "cooler" image and prevent him from getting "managed out" (read: fired) for being "resistant to change" (read: old). So he might give her the kind of work that most people have to wait a few years to have a crack at.
Again, she's not flirting with him, or compromising herself in any way. She's doing exactly what a man would do if he had the courage: going into a powerful person's office and asking for better work.
It doesn't always happen this way, but it can. Career advancement is about stringing together a large number of high-impact, low-probability prospects (with enough parallelism that the likelihood of some success becomes high) and waiting for one to hit. The "superpower" that an attractive woman has doesn't turn the low probability into a high one; it makes it slightly less low.
I'm not saying life is fair and, on the whole, women almost certainly have to deal with more bullshit than men. It's wrong that women's looks are taken to matter so much. It's wrong that people are huge dicks to women about aging. Some of the "old lady" comments I heard when Clinton was running for President in 2008 made me want to vomit.
Men have a huge and unfair advantage after 32, which is that they can have children with their careers interrupted, and that their social status (being abysmal, in the workplace, at 22-24) peaks around 40-50. Men can (and are expected to) work through child-rearing, while for it to make sense for a woman to keep working after having children, she has to make about 2.5 times the average income (to hire help, day care, etc.) On the other hand, women have a huge advantage from 22 to 32, which is that they have the subtle but potent ability to determine who's "cool", and if they're aware of how to use it, they can speed up their careers. And given the heaping plate of bullshit that society gives women once they get older (and it starts in the 30s) they pretty much have to use this advantage while it's there.
Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech
#114Sorry for being off-topic, but why in the world would the net filter here at work have blocked this as "adult content?"
Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course one can assume a sexist intention behind the remark. My question is why? Is it simply because she is a woman and thus we should assume that anything anyone say to her is sexist? Are we really that far gone, and if so, how are we ever going to get work to become a gender neutral environment? Assuming bad faith is not a road to take.
I didn't say "anything anyone says to her sexist", I said "assuming women can't code and hence must be a designer is sexist".
I.e., suppose a new girl shows up at your office. Someone is offering even money that she is a developer. Do you take the bet?
Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech
#116I'll make a controversial observation, but it's worthy of discussion. If you're a woman of average or better looks, you have one under-spoken superpower. Namely, how you interact with other men will have a huge effect on their social status. I'm not talking about overt flirtation (don't do it) or office relationships (avoid, avoid, avoid). I'm talking about more subtle stuff, like who a woman smiles at, who she initi…
(b) It's just an "attractive female" advantage, "attractive men" have been found to have similar advantages.
Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
While and rather excellent article on why the IT field is a suitable career, good grief, the sexism politics has really entrenched itself into people mindset. It almost boggles my mind. Here some supposedly sexist snippets from "scenarios you may occasionally find yourself in when working as a girl in tech". Colleague: “So...you are the new designer?" (As if "so...you are the new Foobar" would not be said to any new…
How and in what way would that be sexist remark The assumpution behind that question is that women could not be a developer. To give racist equivalents, it's as if in the USA, imagine you came into the room and there was a latino man there "Are you the new cleaner?"; or in UK, imagine one was introduced to a new eastern european member of staff, "Are you the new cleaner?". These questions are motivated by racist assu…
In this case, there are other cues that a person can use.
e.g. if the person's wearing a cleaners' uniform, it's not racist to ask them that. If they are wearing a suit, it's at a minimum socially clueless, and at worst bigoted to ask them that.
Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't say "anything anyone says to her sexist", I said "assuming women can't code and hence must be a designer is sexist".
What if the assumption is that P(designer|woman) >> P(developer|woman)? I.e., suppose a new girl shows up at your office. Someone is offering even money that she is a developer. Do you take the bet?
(tl;dr: It's almost certainly an accurate deduction, but acting on it might make society/culture/company worse off, so let's not do it)
Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sounds like an alternate reality. I have a hunch that part of this is related to the fact that nerdess is German. Or at least, she's based in Germany per the site. I'm from Denmark (and a guy), and I can say from firsthand experience that attitudes towards women in Europe are still very old-school. Not everywhere, certainly, and Europeans are open-minded liberal socialists etc, but behind the scenes the old attitud…
Maybe you think of this campaign? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxsMWnK1X7k The tag line is "there is a lot of stuff women don't understand", and the format is a womans literal visualization of a sport metaphor. In this case, "giving away a goal". The campaign is still running, and considered one of the most successful advertising campaigns in Denmark. The company behind it is 80% state owned. and 20% owned by the n…
It is probably also no accident that the Mohammed cartoons were made in Denmark.
The thing is, those weren't even offensive or derogatory. The rest of the world overreacted and rolled over because of overblown threats from the Islamic world.
Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech
#120I'll make a controversial observation, but it's worthy of discussion. If you're a woman of average or better looks, you have one under-spoken superpower. Namely, how you interact with other men will have a huge effect on their social status. I'm not talking about overt flirtation (don't do it) or office relationships (avoid, avoid, avoid). I'm talking about more subtle stuff, like who a woman smiles at, who she initi…
(a) In your hypothetical example, everyone seems to be heterosexual. I assure you reality doesn't fully match your theory. (b) It's just an "attractive female" advantage, "attractive men" have been found to have similar advantages.
b: There's no "attractive male" advantage to be found in tech, at least not compared to "attractive female" advantage as your parent explained.